


verbiage

by KretinaDivina



Category: AFI, Blaqk Audio
Genre: 2012, Heartbreak, M/M, Melodrama, Purposeful Purple Prose, RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:48:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5993773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KretinaDivina/pseuds/KretinaDivina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade's wedding looms, and Davey is tantalized by something he can no longer have.   Inspired by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nesULiqkRHY">this interview.</a></p><p> </p><p>Written in fall of 2012, never posted until now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	verbiage

**Author's Note:**

> I promise my writing is not naturally quite so wordy. This is just how it came out. Sorry for the song lyrics.

_verbiage_

_august 2012_

 

Dressed up in two layers too many for August and half-hanging out an open car window like old laundry on a steaming radiator was enough to make any man feel positively wretched, or some such dismal emotion.  It was unclear to Davey why he was making himself suffer so.  Certainly he had suffered enough today during the interview; certainly the past few years had turned him into a Tantalus, the grape that hung over him growing juicier by the day.

The grape in question sat beside him, fingers spiderwebbed across the steering wheel, grey suit jacket hanging open with an indifference that was enviable.  He showed no sign of weakness in the heat other than a spot of pink on each puffy cheek.  Otherwise, his clothes remained as free of sweat and his bangs remained as artfully flat-ironed as they had been inside the studio.  

This was all, Davey thought, in layman’s terms,  _fucking unfair_.

“You could at least close the window.” Jade, his Tantalus’ grape, his Herculean labor, his Jade.  “The A/C in this car actually  _works_ , you might remember this from earlier this morning…”

“Your A/C didn’t work in high school,” Davey mumbled nonsensically into the reassuringly sweaty crook of his sun-baked elbow.  Reassuringly because the discomfiting gaudiness, the  _loudness_  of this heat was a reminder that it was not yet September, the month of summer’s mourned ending, the month soon to be gouged and gutted by a certain wedding.

“True.  But also true that we’re not even a little in high school anymore…oh God I hope we’re not in high school anymore…What if we  _are?_ What if we woke up right now and we were, like—”

The gleaming asphalt beneath them made for a fascinating backdrop for Davey’s sweating, plaid arm.  He stared at both of these things instead of staring at Jade.  He felt fraudulent being this despondent, like he really in fact was one of the tragic characters from their videos that he always denied being.  Like he had lied to everyone.

“Why’re you sulking, Davey?” Jade said.  His voice crept up into soft concern.  “I thought it went well.  It always goes well.”

Finally Davey extricated himself from the humid comfort of his arm and stared his torment in the eye.  Jade looked an often-seen mix of bored, concerned and patient.  This was all, at the risk of being repetitive,  _pretty fucking unfair_.

“That’s the problem,” he said.  “It  _did_  go well.  I think it went  _much_  too well.”

“Oh?” said Jade.   “Hey, can I start the car now?  And close the window?  Then you can tell me why you’re sitting there all vexed.”

“Vexed?”  A good word, the kind Jade would say with a little smirk, knowing, as he did, the importance of beautiful words.

“Yeah, vexed.  What’s up?”

It wasn’t as if this sort of discussion had never happened before, so Davey figured he might as well get right to it.  “It was too good, Jade.  _You_  were too good.”

“What do you mean?”  Two of the cobweb-fingers extended further, entangling in the keys waiting in the ignition.

“I’m not sure how else I’d say it.”

Jade started the engine; it shuddered and hummed discreetly like it hoped it would not be asked to be a part of this conversation.

“The way you talked about yourself and how much you produce—how much you need to let out of you each day—Jade, you  _know_  I think that’s fucking sexy.”

“In layman’s terms,” Jade said, making no move to shift into reverse.

“Right, in layman’s terms.”  If even the simple words they said contained years and years of intimacy, of meaning, behind them, Davey knew this suffering would be endless, a third-degree burn with nothing to graft to it.

"I don't see where this is going..." said Jade, who was now staring too hard at the windshield and brushing the sides of his fingers over the car keys as he’d do to soft, pliant skin.  "I was just saying what I've always said about my songwriting, it was nothing –”

Enough of the bullshit, Davey thought; even he would concede that poetry was sometimes ineffective.  He reached out and cupped Jade’s chin in his hand like a dry mouth clinging to much-needed water.  He looked right into Jade’s eyes, which were having one of their hazel days, trying to make his own as imploring as they had once never needed to be.  His fingers caught on a tiny bit of forgotten stubble. “You can't do this to me.”

“What?”

Davey squeezed Jade’s tensing jaw gently.  “Leave her.  Be an asshole for me, just this once, be a beautiful asshole phoenix and let yourself burn to ashes and—”

Jade’s discomfort was playing out like a B-movie plot; like alien abductions, demonic possessions, parasitic invasions.  There was suddenly something new in him that wasn’t supposed to be there, and judging by the wavering in that square jaw, the scurrying motions of the vibrant eyes, and, of course, the looming, teeth-bared approach of September, that something new might become something permanent.  “Okay, dude, but could you let go of me first, I can’t really talk with your hands on--”

“Could I?  Could I just--”  Davey granted Jade his wish, moving his hands so that they clawed more desperately than anyone of his age’s hands should claw at the as-yet-unsullied grey jacket.  The words he’d written over three years ago were sliding out unbidden the way flawless language should, gaining enough strength when uttered to dominate its creator.  “Find a way?…I’d find you every day and we could alter time—”

“No!  Okay, no.”  Jade’s fingers wove around Davey’s biceps and the two stayed holding each other hostage, Jade pressing into the muscle unforgivingly.  “You need to _stop quoting your own lyrics_.”

Davey stared at this abducted-Jade, possessed-Jade, invaded-Jade.  Of all the things he could go and fucking say—

“I mean—”  Jade’s grip loosened slightly and something human finally flickered in his eyes. “It’s just kind of annoying and—and an insult to your own intelligence, you of all people could come up with something original—”

“Original?  They’re not just _song lyrics_ ,” Davey hissed, his mouth caressing each syllable a little before it departed into the thickening air of Jade’s car.  “They’re my _words_.”  He squeezed harder into the ropy muscles underneath his fingers.  “I wrote them and I’ll use them whenever I fucking want to.”

“Yeah, and I write the music, but I don’t just _hum_ it at you when I get pissed off,” Jade said, twisting back to face the steering wheel as though the thing were a giant ‘reset’ button.  “I’m not like _hmm hmm hmm, guitar solo, fuck you dude!_   And now I’m getting us out of this fucking parking lot.  What are two guys like us doing hanging out in a parking lot?”

Subtlety’s stifling games had never particularly appealed to Davey and they certainly weren’t going to do much good on this stagnant afternoon.  Desperate times, as the saying went, called for desperate measures.  He threw all caution to the winds of the blasting A/C and leaned over to massage the smooth helix of Jade’s ear with his lips in a way that he knew to be _excruciatingly_ lightly.  He was using her shampoo again, as though to function as some sort of deterrence, but Davey was not one to be deterred.  He’d never had to manipulate Jade before, symbiotic pair that they had been, but September, that omniscient menace—He’d do whatever it fucking took.

Jade squeaked and ducked, cringing against the window.  The adorable pink spots on his cheeks had grown.  “Davey, what the fuck, we’re in _public_!” he snapped, looking more terrified than Davey had expected.

“And when was the last time this was a _secret_ , Jade?”

Jade jerked the car into reverse.  It was a coward’s action, an oily move, Davey realized—the dangers of reversing without looking made it dangerous, criminally so, to look at Davey.  Davey wondered, half thinking it was absurd and half thinking it was true, if _she_ was a bad influence on him.

“Davey.” 

Davey pushed Jade’s bangs back as far behind his ear as they could go.  Jade flinched but made no other protest.  His cheeks were redder now and they puffed out even more adorably than usual as he bit at his lip.  Again, Davey thought, apologizing to his mind for his sudden lack of originality, _really not fucking fair_.

“She doesn’t trust me.”  Jade wasn’t one for outbursts, but now there were portentous clouds gathering in the depths of his hazel irises.  “…It’s been six fucking years and she still doesn’t—”

“I suppose she and I both lose, then,” Davey said, removing his hand from Jade’s perspiring forehead and crossing his arms across his chest.  He folded his legs, too, just as he had in the interview.  “Right?  She doesn’t _trust_ you, I’m left without you…What have you done, Jade?”

“Why are you talking like this?” Jade said.  “You know, I’ve asked you this _every time_ you bring this up.”  He hit the steering wheel with each word.  “What do you want me to do?  What am I supposed to do?”

“You should have thought of that a long time ago, Jade,” Davey said.  “You know…I can’t always be the one providing the things for us to say.”

“I love her, dude,” Jade said to the windshield as he turned the car onto the main road.  “You know that.”

“So you’ve told me.”

“So I’m not going to hurt her any more than I already have.  She’s a fucking saint, she doesn’t give me any shit at all for our Blaqk Audio sessions.  I’m a _man_ , Davey.”  He hit the steering wheel too hard and made a face.  Davey filed this fact in his mind, years too late—Jade was _cute_ when he was feeling mortally wounded.  “So I’m going to act like one.  And I’m not going to be your… _beautiful phoenix asshole._ This isn’t a Sing the Sorrow lyrics-writing session.  This is—”

“Hey, Jade?”  Davey said, letting his tongue lap against the corners of his mouth, not that Jade, always the conscientious driver, was looking.

“ _What_.”

“Shut up.”

“What?”

“Shut.  The fuck.  Up.”

Jade, the conscientious driver, pulled his hand off the wheel and slapped Davey hard in the face.  Davey’s teeth were forced into the little dent in his lip where his ring had once been.  He tasted blood and was mortally wounded and it wasn’t cute at _all_.

And there, Davey realized, sitting just to the left of him was the ultimate justification for his atheism, the proof that there was no God—such a being would not let two perfect threads of humanity become so unfortunately unraveled.

“How am I supposed to think of all those years?  They’re _ruined_ now.”

“I _know_.  _God_.  You’ve mentioned this before.” 

Jade pulled off the road.  He extended his hands palms-up.  A peace offering.  Peace for _him_ , maybe.

"I’m not doing this anymore.  I can’t.  It’s over.”

“ _What’s over?_ ”

“I dunno.”  Jade bit his lip.  Davey saw a little boy, 16 year-old Jade with his skateboard tucked under his arm.  “Whatever you want to be over, I guess.”

Davey tried to give Jade the most horrible death-glare possible, to show Jade what he’d done.  To make Jade feel any of the things he used to feel.  But he couldn’t summon up the energy.  He felt a pit open up within him in which everything was clamoring.  Words, lyrics, sounds, feelings, memories—all were swirling into the pit, leaving nothing to say and nothing to show.

“Davey?” 

Nothing.

“We can still be friends.  We’ll always be friends.  Right?”

Nothing.

“ _Davey?_ ”

“I feel nothing,” Davey said, his voice sounding like a stranger’s.  “I feel nothing at all.”

 

 


End file.
